Board and Staff

BRET GROTE

Bret Grote is the Legal Director of ALC, and a licensed attorney in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is a 2013 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and was recognized as the Distinguished Public Interest Scholar for his graduating class. He was the Isabel and Alger Hiss Racial Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2012. In addition to his work at Abolitionist Law Center, Bret has been a volunteer investigator, organizer, and researcher with HRC since 2007.

DUSTIN MCDANIEL

Dustin McDaniel is the Executive Director of ALC, and is a licensed attorney in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is a 2012 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Public and International Affairs.

JAMELIA MORGAN

Jamelia Morgan is a Staff Attorney with the Abolitionist Law Center where she litigates prison conditions cases and cases to end solitary confinement. Jamelia is the former Arthur Liman Fellow at the ACLU National Prison Project (NPP). At NPP, Jamelia worked on the ACLU’s Stop Solitary campaign seeking to end the practice of solitary confinement in our nation’s prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers through public policy reform, legislation, litigation, and public education. Jamelia is the author of a 2017 ACLU report titled Caged In: Solitary Confinement’s Devastating Harms on Prisoners with Physical Disabilities. She is a 2013 graduate of Yale Law School, where she was an active member of the Criminal Defense Project and the Detention and Human Rights Clinic. Jamelia is a 2006 graduate of Stanford University where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Master of Arts degree in Sociology.

JASMINE GONZALES ROSE

Jasmine Gonzales Rose is a member of ALC’s Board of Directors. A Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Jasmine Gonzales Rose is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she served as Editor-In-Chief of the Harvard Latino Law Review and a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. After law school, she clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Hector M. Laffitte of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. She has also worked for a variety of non-profit and governmental organizations on issues of civil and human rights. Currently she serves on the Boards of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Greater Pittsburgh and the Abolitionist Law Center.

Professor Gonzales Rose is a critical proceduralist and is particularly interested in the intersections of race, language, citizenship, and lay participation in the legal system. She teaches courses in Evidence, Civil Procedure (including Complex Litigation with an emphasis on social change), and Race and the Law. In 2014, she received Pitt Law’s Distinguished Public Interest Professor Award and was selected as an inaugural Derrick A. Bell Fund for Excellence Scholar. Professor Gonzales Rose was awarded the Robert T. Harper Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015.

JIHAD ABDULMUMIT

Jihad Abdulmumit is a member of ALC’s Board of Directors. He is the Chairperson of the National Jericho Movement, which supports political prisoners in the United States and works to win their freedom through amnesty. He is a community activist, playwright, and health care provider. He works as a Community Case Manager at a free health clinic and gives HIV/STI workshops in schools and prisons, does HIV testing in jails/prisons, and case manages HIV + inmates upon their release. He and his wife own their own community theater company – For Our Children Productions – which produces several original social/political theme orientated performances a year. He has a MBA, with a concentration in Health Services from Strayer University.

Jihad was a domestic political prisoner and prisoner of war, and served 23 years of his life in prison for his involvement in the Black Liberation Movement. He joined the Black Panther Party at sixteen and eventually went underground in the ranks of the Black Liberation Army. Most of his time was served in Lewisburg and Leavenworth Federal penitentiaries. In the mid-seventies prior to his incarceration, Jihad was also the Coordinator of the Rochester Federation of Youth in Rochester, New York – a youth organization that sponsored community economic development projects, weekly political education and black history classes, and worked with troubled teens.

JULES LOBEL

Jules Lobel is the President of the Board of Directors for Abolitionist Law Center. Professor Jules Lobel is the Bessie McKee Walthour Endowed Chair at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is also the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a national human and constitutional rights organization headquartered in New York City. He has litigated numerous cases involving Constitutional and Human Rights issues in the United States Courts and has represented members of Congress challenging various Presidents – both Democrat and Republican – assertions of Executive power to unilaterally initiate warfare. Lobel has been involved in various cases challenging aspects of US policy toward suspected terrorists, including Rasul v. Bush, arguing for habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo detainees, Arar v. Ashcroft, seeking damages for a Canadian citizen who alleged that he was wrongfully rendered to Syria to be tortured by high U.S. officials, and Holder v. HLP, a Supreme Court case challenging aspects of the material aid to terrorism statute as violative of the First Amendment.

Lobel has authored several books, including Success Without Victory: Lost Legal Battles and the Long Road to Justice in America, as well as numerous articles on international and constitutional law in publications including Yale Law Journal, Harvard International Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review and Virginia Law Review. In 2007, Lobel co-authored the award winning book, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America is Losing the War on Terror with Professor David Cole, which won the first Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for exemplary scholarship exploring the tension between civil liberties and national security. Lobel’s article, entitled, Preventive Paradigm and the Perils of Ad Hoc Balancing was selected by Oxford University Press as one of the Top Ten Global Justice Law Review Articles in 2007.

LAUREN JOHNSON

Lauren Johnson is the Program Coordinator and Mitigation Specialist for ALC. She graduated from California University of Pennsylvania in 2015 with a graduate degree in social work. Prior to working with ALC, Lauren has worked and volunteered in various aspects of the nonprofit sector, including domestic violence advocacy, HIV/AIDS awareness, international development, mental health services, and disaster relief.

LISA FREELAND

Lisa Freeland is a member of ALC’s Board of Directors. Ms. Freeland is the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Pennsylvania. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Tufts University in 1984 and a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1994. She also holds a Master of Science degree in Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After receiving her journalism degree, Ms. Freeland worked for American Lawyer Media, LP, where she served as Associate Editor of The American Lawyer magazine and as a reporter for San Francisco’s daily legal newspaper, The Recorder. After graduation from law school, Ms. Freeland served as a law clerk to the Honorable Timothy K. Lewis, then a member of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She was a Visiting Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and staff attorney at the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City before joining the Federal Public Defender’s office as a Research and Writing Specialist in 1999. Ms. Freeland is a frequent faculty member at local and national CLE programs, speaking regularly on sentencing issues, appellate advocacy, procedural issues in habeas corpus cases, and ethics, among others. She is a native of Pittsburgh and is active in her local community, having served on a number of boards, including the Urban League of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Branch NAACP, and the ACLU of Greater Pittsburgh. She is also a founding member of the Board of Governors of the Bar Association of the Third Federal Circuit and a past board president. Her practice focuses primarily on criminal appeals and habeas corpus cases.

QUINN COZZENS

Quinn Cozzens is the Life-Without-Parole Fellow for ALC. He is a licensed attorney in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a 2016 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

SHANDRE DELANEY

Shandre Delaney is the Secretary of ALC, and is an organizer with the Justice for the Dallas 6 Support Campaign. Her son Carrington Keys is one of the Dallas 6, a group of prisoner-whistleblowers who have been facing retaliatory criminal charges of “riot” for a peaceful protest against guard abuse of prisoners at SCI Dallas. She has been an activist since 2008 with the Human Rights Coalition (HRC), a prisoner’s rights group founded by Pennsylvania prisoners and their supporters, and is currently heading up the Prisoner Justice and Whistleblower Support Campaign to protect other prisoners facing retaliatory abuse.

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Institutionalized Cruelty: The Use of Solitary Confinement in Pennsylvania Prisons (Video) | Abolitionist Law Center · March 12, 2014 at 19:12:17 · →

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